1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method for limiting the viewing time of a viewer to protect the viewer's eyesight, and more particularly to a method of controlling an electronic device display for ensuring the viewers to rest their eyes after each predetermined period of time.
2. Description of Related Arts
Electronic devices are indispensable for our daily lives. People use computers for work, play video games and watch TVs during their leisure time and etc. Since many people spend a vast portion of their daily lives fixating on display screens of electronic devices, to protect a viewer's eyesight from excessive usage of any electronic device and prevent eye straining become a dramatic issue nowadays.
One of the most important factors in protection of the eyesight for electronic device viewers is to have an intermittent rest for their eyes follow a certain time of use. To protect the eyes from being over-used, the viewer should take a rest and/or do some eye exercises to help relax the muscles of the eyeballs. For example, children spend much time focusing on watching the displays of the electronic devices, such as computers for playing the ever-increasing number of games available. To compensate, the eyeball is thought to grow longer, so less effort is needed to focus up close on the computer display. When this happens, the elongated eye can no longer focus on distant objects. After the muscle of the eyeball being elongated too long, the muscle will loose its flexibility for adjusting the focus on distant objects, so that the eyesight problems such as nearsightedness and eye straining can occurred.
Even though people know how important it is to relax the eyeball muscles timely, people tend to forget taking a break and resting their eyes after viewing the display for a certain time. When people put themselves in work or indulge in a video game, it is hard to interrupt the work or video game to rest their eyes. An enforcing feature is needed to remind the viewers not to overuse their precious eyes. It is crucial that this enforcing feature can interrupt the viewer's current work, such as playing video games on an electronic game device, editing files on computer, or watching TV, so that the viewer won't continue to strain his or her eyes from using these devices.
A working distance between the viewer and the display of the electronic device is another important factor. Keeping certain working distance can also help to prevent the eyesight problems from getting worse quickly as well. A method or system for detecting the working distance has a great need for protecting the eyesight. Moreover, younger kids, especially those with family history of nearsightedness, tend to be more likely to develop these visual problems at an earlier age. It is becoming increasingly difficult for their parents to monitor their usage pattern on these electronic devices. Therefore, a dedicated feature on these electronic devices that can monitor both the viewers' usage and working distance is indeed necessary and crucial if we want to slow down the development of visual problems for all users.